Eco-friendly or Eco-frenzy? A cost-benefit analysis of companies’ environmental decisions

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and analyze the incremental costs of businesses becoming “green.” It answers the overarching question: are businesses becoming eco-friendly or eco-frenzy? For the purposes of this paper, eco-friendly is defined as companies that strive to be environmentally conscious. Conversely, companies that are eco-frenzy become environmentally conscious for the wrong reasons, such as gaining an environmental reputation. With the increase in popularity of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the legal requirements related to environmental laws, more businesses have been incorporating the ideas of sustainability into their strategic positioning. At the start of the 21st century a disclosure framework for sustainability was created and guidelines of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) were put into practice. Hence, companies are producing separate environmental and sustainable reports as part of their annual financial statements. These reports include the information of costs incurred and benefits and savings realized as a result of implementing environmental practices. A sample of four companies, Canon, IBM, Intel, and Texas Instrument’s 2008-2010, annual environmental reports were used as data for this study. The cost-benefit effects were analyzed and conclusions drawn. The results of this study reveal that IBM and Canon were eco-friendly while Intel and Texas Instruments showed an eco-frenzy correlation

Predictive ability of the Desire to Avoid Pregnancy scale

BACKGROUND: A longstanding gap in the reproductive health field has been the availability of a screening instrument that can reliably predict a person's likelihood of becoming pregnant. The Desire to Avoid Pregnancy Scale is a new measure; understanding its sensitivity and specificity as a screening tool for pregnancy as well as its predictive ability and how this varies by socio-demographic factors is important to inform its implementation. METHODS: This analysis was conducted on a cohort of 994 non-pregnant participants recruited in October 2018 and followed up for one year. The cohort was recruited using social media as well as advertisements in a university, school, abortion clinic and outreach sexual health service. Almost 90% of eligible participants completed follow-up at 12 months; those lost to follow-up were not significantly different on key socio-demographic factors. We used baseline DAP score and a binary variable of whether participants experienced pregnancy during the study to assess the sensitivity, specificity, area under the ROC curve (AUROC) and positive and negative predictive values (PPV and NPV) of the DAP at a range of cut-points. We also examined how the predictive ability of the DAP varied according to socio-demographic factors and by the time frame considered (e.g., pregnancy within 3, 6, 9 and 12 months). RESULTS: At a cut-point of 2 on the 0-4 range of the DAP scale, the DAP had a sensitivity of 0.78, a specificity of 0.81 and an excellent AUROC of 0.87. In this sample the cumulative incidence of pregnancy was 16% (95%CI 13%, 18%) making the PPV 43% and the NPV 95% at this cut-point. The DAP score was the factor most strongly associated with pregnancy, even after age and number of children were taken into account. The association between baseline DAP score and pregnancy did not differ across time frames. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to assess the DAP scale as a screening tool and shows that its predictive ability is superior to the limited pre-existing pregnancy prediction tools. Based on our findings, the DAP could be used with a cut-point selected according to the purpose

Desire to Avoid Pregnancy scale:clinical considerations and comparison with other questions about pregnancy preferences

BACKGROUND: Clinicians and women of reproductive age would benefit from a reliable way to identify who is likely to become pregnant in the next year, in order to direct health advice. The 14-item Desire to Avoid Pregnancy (DAP) scale is predictive of pregnancy; this paper compares it with other ways of assessing pregnancy preferences to shortlist options for clinical implementation. METHODS: A cohort of 994 UK women of reproductive age completed the DAP and other questions about pregnancy preferences, including the Attitude towards Potential Pregnancy Scale (APPS), at baseline and reported on pregnancies quarterly for a year. For each question, DAP item and combinations of DAP items, we examined the predictive ability, sensitivity, specificity, area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC), and positive and negative predictive values. RESULTS: The AUROCs and predictive ability of the APPS and DAP single items were weaker than the full DAP, though all except one had acceptable AUROCs (>0.7). The most predictive individual DAP item was 'It would be a good thing for me if I became pregnant in the next 3 months', where women who strongly agreed had a 66.7% chance of pregnancy within 12 months and the AUROC was acceptable (0.77). CONCLUSION: We recommend exploring the acceptability to women and healthcare professionals of asking a single DAP item ('It would be a good thing for me if I became pregnant in the next 3 months'), possibly in combination with additional DAP items. This will help to guide service provision to support reproductive preferences

Words of agency: Executed and observed vocal actions induce a temporal binding effect

Humans generally experience a sense of agency over the outcomes produced by their motor actions. This has been well established in the case of manual actions that directly affect the physical environment. Vocalizations are also actions, but they typically have only indirect effects on the environment. In the present research, we explore whether the outcomes produced by vocalizations also elicit a sense of agency. In three experiments, using an interval reproduction task, we find that performing a vocal action that produced an auditory outcome caused participants to underestimate the amount of elapsed time between actions and outcomes (i.e., temporal binding), an implicit index of the sense of agency (Experiment 1). We also show that observing others produce vocal actions elicits temporal binding, but only when the observer has direct visual access to the vocal action being executed (Experiments 2 and 3). Taken together, our findings suggest that direct observation of an action is necessary to experience a temporal binding effect for actions performed by others, and that audio-visuomotor information may play a role in the generation of temporal compression experienced over observed action

Using large-scale genomics data to identify driver mutations in lung cancer: methods and challenges

Lung cancer is the commonest cause of cancer death in the world and carries a poor prognosis for most patients. While precision targeting of mutated proteins has given some successes for never- and light-smoking patients, there are no proven targeted therapies for the majority of smokers with the disease. Despite sequencing hundreds of lung cancers, known driver mutations are lacking for a majority of tumors. Distinguishing driver mutations from inconsequential passenger mutations in a given lung tumor is extremely challenging due to the high mutational burden of smoking-related cancers. Here we discuss the methods employed to identify driver mutations from these large datasets. We examine different approaches based on bioinformatics, in silico structural modeling and biological dependency screens and discuss the limitations of these approaches

Shaping care home COVID-19 testing policy: a protocol for a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial of asymptomatic testing compared with standard care in care home staff (VIVALDI-CT)

INTRODUCTION: Care home residents have experienced significant morbidity, mortality and disruption following outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2. Regular SARS-CoV-2 testing of care home staff was introduced to reduce transmission of infection, but it is unclear whether this remains beneficial. This trial aims to investigate whether use of regular asymptomatic staff testing, alongside funding to reimburse sick pay for those who test positive and meet costs of employing agency staff, is a feasible and effective strategy to reduce COVID-19 impact in care homes. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The VIVALDI-Clinical Trial is a multicentre, open-label, cluster randomised controlled, phase III/IV superiority trial in up to 280 residential and/or nursing homes in England providing care to adults aged >65 years. All regular and agency staff will be enrolled, excepting those who opt out. Homes will be randomised to the intervention arm (twice weekly asymptomatic staff testing for SARS-CoV-2) or the control arm (current national testing guidance). Staff who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 will self-isolate and receive sick pay. Care providers will be reimbursed for costs associated with employing temporary staff to backfill for absence arising directly from the trial.The trial will be delivered by a multidisciplinary research team through a series of five work packages.The primary outcome is the incidence of COVID-19-related hospital admissions in residents. Secondary outcomes include the number and duration of outbreaks and home closures. Health economic and modelling analyses will investigate the cost-effectiveness and cost consequences of the testing intervention. A process evaluation using qualitative interviews will be conducted to understand intervention roll out and identify areas for optimisation to inform future intervention scale-up, should the testing approach prove effective and cost-effective. Stakeholder engagement will be undertaken to enable the sector to plan for results and their implications and to coproduce recommendations on the use of testing for policy-makers. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study has been approved by the London-Bromley Research Ethics Committee (reference number 22/LO/0846) and the Health Research Authority (22/CAG/0165). The results of the trial will be disseminated regardless of the direction of effect. The publication of the results will comply with a trial-specific publication policy and will include submission to open access journals. A lay summary of the results will also be produced to disseminate the results to participants. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISRCTN13296529

Shaping care home COVID-19 testing policy: a protocol for a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial of asymptomatic testing compared with standard care in care home staff (VIVALDI-CT)

INTRODUCTION: Care home residents have experienced significant morbidity, mortality and disruption following outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2. Regular SARS-CoV-2 testing of care home staff was introduced to reduce transmission of infection, but it is unclear whether this remains beneficial. This trial aims to investigate whether use of regular asymptomatic staff testing, alongside funding to reimburse sick pay for those who test positive and meet costs of employing agency staff, is a feasible and effective strategy to reduce COVID-19 impact in care homes. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The VIVALDI-Clinical Trial is a multicentre, open-label, cluster randomised controlled, phase III/IV superiority trial in up to 280 residential and/or nursing homes in England providing care to adults aged >65 years. All regular and agency staff will be enrolled, excepting those who opt out. Homes will be randomised to the intervention arm (twice weekly asymptomatic staff testing for SARS-CoV-2) or the control arm (current national testing guidance). Staff who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 will self-isolate and receive sick pay. Care providers will be reimbursed for costs associated with employing temporary staff to backfill for absence arising directly from the trial.The trial will be delivered by a multidisciplinary research team through a series of five work packages.The primary outcome is the incidence of COVID-19-related hospital admissions in residents. Secondary outcomes include the number and duration of outbreaks and home closures. Health economic and modelling analyses will investigate the cost-effectiveness and cost consequences of the testing intervention. A process evaluation using qualitative interviews will be conducted to understand intervention roll out and identify areas for optimisation to inform future intervention scale-up, should the testing approach prove effective and cost-effective. Stakeholder engagement will be undertaken to enable the sector to plan for results and their implications and to coproduce recommendations on the use of testing for policy-makers. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study has been approved by the London-Bromley Research Ethics Committee (reference number 22/LO/0846) and the Health Research Authority (22/CAG/0165). The results of the trial will be disseminated regardless of the direction of effect. The publication of the results will comply with a trial-specific publication policy and will include submission to open access journals. A lay summary of the results will also be produced to disseminate the results to participants. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISRCTN13296529

FracPaQ: A MATLAB™ toolbox for the quantification of fracture patterns

The patterns of fractures in deformed rocks are rarely uniform or random. Fracture orientations, sizes, and spatial distributions often exhibit some kind of order. In detail, relationships may exist among the different fracture attributes, e.g. small fractures dominated by one orientation, larger fractures by another. These relationships are important because the mechanical (e.g. strength, anisotropy) and transport (e.g. fluids, heat) properties of rock depend on these fracture attributes and patterns. This paper describes FracPaQ, a new open source, cross-platform toolbox to quantify fracture patterns, including distributions in fracture attributes and their spatial variation. Software has been developed to quantify fracture patterns from 2-D digital images, such as thin section micrographs, geological maps, outcrop or aerial photographs or satellite images. The toolbox comprises a suite of MATLAB™ scripts based on previously published quantitative methods for the analysis of fracture attributes: orientations, lengths, intensity, density and connectivity.An estimate of permeability in 2-D is made using a parallel plate model. The software provides an objective and consistent methodology for quantifying fracture patterns and their variations in 2-D across a wide range of length scales, rock types and tectonic settings. The implemented methods presented are inherently scale independent, and a key task where applicable is analysing and integrating quantitative fracture pattern data from micro-to macro-scales. The toolbox was developed in MATLAB™ and the source code is publicly available on GitHub™ and the Mathworks™ FileExchange. The code runs on any computer with MATLAB installed, including PCs with Microsoft Windows, Apple Macs with Mac OS X, and machines running different flavours of Linux. The application, source code and sample input files are available in open repositories in the hope that other developers and researchers will optimise and extend the functionality for the benefit of the wider community

Extensive study of HD 25558, a long-period double-lined binary with two SPB components

We carried out an extensive observational study of the Slowly Pulsating B (SPB) star, HD 25558. The ≈2000 spectra obtained at different observatories, the ground-based and MOST satellite light curves revealed that this object is a double-lined spectroscopic binary with an orbital period of about nine years. The observations do not allow the inference of an orbital solution. We determined the physical parameters of the components, and found that both lie within the SPB instability strip. Accordingly, both show line-profile variations due to stellar pulsations. 11 independent frequencies were identified in the data. All the frequencies were attributed to one of the two components based on pixel-by-pixel variability analysis of the line profiles. Spectroscopic and photometric mode identification was also performed for the frequencies of both stars. These results suggest that the inclination and rotation of the two components are rather different. The primary is a slow rotator with ≈6 d period, seen at ≈60° inclination, while the secondary rotates fast with ≈1.2 d period, and is seen at ≈20° inclination. Spectropolarimetric measurements revealed that the secondary component has a magnetic field with at least a few hundred Gauss strength, while no magnetic field can be detected in the primary

Shaping care home COVID-19 testing policy : a protocol for a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial of asymptomatic testing compared with standard care in care home staff (VIVALDI-CT)

Introduction Care home residents have experienced significant morbidity, mortality and disruption following outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2. Regular SARS-CoV-2 testing of care home staff was introduced to reduce transmission of infection, but it is unclear whether this remains beneficial. This trial aims to investigate whether use of regular asymptomatic staff testing, alongside funding to reimburse sick pay for those who test positive and meet costs of employing agency staff, is a feasible and effective strategy to reduce COVID-19 impact in care homes. Methods and analysis The VIVALDI-Clinical Trial is a multicentre, open-label, cluster randomised controlled, phase III/IV superiority trial in up to 280 residential and/or nursing homes in England providing care to adults aged >65 years. All regular and agency staff will be enrolled, excepting those who opt out. Homes will be randomised to the intervention arm (twice weekly asymptomatic staff testing for SARS-CoV-2) or the control arm (current national testing guidance). Staff who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 will self-isolate and receive sick pay. Care providers will be reimbursed for costs associated with employing temporary staff to backfill for absence arising directly from the trial. The trial will be delivered by a multidisciplinary research team through a series of five work packages. The primary outcome is the incidence of COVID-19-related hospital admissions in residents. Secondary outcomes include the number and duration of outbreaks and home closures. Health economic and modelling analyses will investigate the cost-effectiveness and cost consequences of the testing intervention. A process evaluation using qualitative interviews will be conducted to understand intervention roll out and identify areas for optimisation to inform future intervention scale-up, should the testing approach prove effective and cost-effective. Stakeholder engagement will be undertaken to enable the sector to plan for results and their implications and to coproduce recommendations on the use of testing for policy-makers. Ethics and dissemination The study has been approved by the London—Bromley Research Ethics Committee (reference number 22/LO/0846) and the Health Research Authority (22/CAG/0165). The results of the trial will be disseminated regardless of the direction of effect. The publication of the results will comply with a trial-specific publication policy and will include submission to open access journals. A lay summary of the results will also be produced to disseminate the results to participants